Note Effects

Most of Kiwisonic's effects apply to a whole track or a whole section. Note effects are different — they apply to one note. A single sustained chord that gets a long reverb tail while everything around it stays dry. A single hi-hat hit that gets stuttered into a fill. One pluck with a sudden filter close.

Two kinds live in the piano roll:

• Per-note effect overrides — change a normal effect's settings just for the lifetime of one note.
• Sequencer-level note effects — non-audio transforms applied at the MIDI level. Currently: Humanization (timing/velocity feel) and Stutter (rapid retriggers).

Both are accessed by right-clicking a note in the piano roll.

Per-note effect overrides

What it does

Pick any effect in the chain and override its settings for the duration of a single note. When the note starts, the engine swaps in your override; when the note ends, it reverts back to the normal section value (or to the current automation value if a ramp is active — no audible jump).

You can override:

• Enabled — turn an effect on for one note while it's off elsewhere, or vice versa
• Preset — pick a different preset just for this note
• Macros — give the note a different mix, rate, depth, etc.

How to set one

1. Right-click the note → Note effects → pick a slot.
2. Adjust the override settings — same controls as the normal effect card.
3. Close the menu. The note now shows a thin 3 px coloured stripe along its top, in the effect's category colour (Shape = Orange, Color = Purple, Space = Cyan, Character = Amber).

Hover the note to see a tooltip listing its overrides.

Removing an override

Right-click the note → Note effects → the slot's submenu has a Remove override option. Or override the same slot back to the section-default values.

When this is useful

• A single climactic chord with a long reverb tail while the rest of the section is dry
• A single note with a heavy bitcrush effect (a "wrong note" deliberately distorted as a feature)
• A pluck note with a sudden short delay throw, while the section's delay is set to a longer rhythmic echo
• One held pad note with the filter wide open while everything else sits filtered down

Use sparingly — per-note overrides are surgical. If you find yourself overriding the same slot on most notes in a section, that's a sign the section's setting should be different.

Stutter

Stutter rapidly retriggers a note — a single note becomes 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 16 short hits at the same pitch. The result is a MIDI-level stutter, so it works on any instrument and the retriggers respect the patch's articulation.

This is different from the audio-level Gate effect (which chops volume at the audio level). Stutter is good for synth stabs, plucks, and short-attack instruments where you want the attack to fire repeatedly. Gate is good for pads and samples where you want to chop a held sound rhythmically. They can be combined.

Applying a uniform stutter

1. Right-click the note → Stutter → pick a count: 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 16.
2. The note splits into N equal-length hits.

Applying a stutter progression

Select a range of notes (Ctrl+drag a box, or Ctrl+A for all) → right-click → Stutter → Progression…. The progression ramps the stutter count across the selected notes — e.g. starts at 2, builds to 8 by the end. The counts are picked from the standard subdivisions {2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 16}, snapped to the grid so the result stays musical.

This is a one-shot — the stutter timings are baked into the pattern. To clear, right-click the affected notes → Stutter → Remove.

When this is useful

• Drum fills — stutter the last hi-hat or snare of a bar to push into the next section
• Glitchy electronic textures — stutter every fourth synth hit for a stuttered lead
• Ramping intensity — a stutter progression across the last 4 notes of a phrase reads as a build

To Chord

Turns a note into a chord — or swaps one chord for another. The note you clicked becomes the root (the lowest note) and the chord tones are stacked above it.

How to use it

1. Shift+right-click a note → To Chord.
2. Pick a chord type: Major, Minor, Diminished, Augmented, Sus2, Sus4, Major 7th, Minor 7th, or Dominant 7th.
3. The chord tones appear above the root, sharing its start, length, and velocity. The whole chord is left selected so you can nudge or re-voice it straight away.

On a single note, this builds a fresh chord on top of it.

On a note that's already part of a chord — a stack of notes sharing the exact same start and length — picking a type replaces the chord. The note you clicked becomes the new root, so right-clicking the third of a C major chord and choosing Major gives you an E major chord. That makes it quick to audition chord colours: re-chord, listen, re-chord again.

To Chord is hidden only when notes partially overlap the clicked note — a different start or length. That spot is too tangled to convert cleanly; line the notes up (or clear them) first.

When this is useful

• Sketching a melody as single notes first, then thickening key moments into chords
• Harmonising a bass note or a held pad note without leaving the piano roll
• Auditioning chord colours fast — major, minor, sus, seventh — without redrawing notes

A chord built very high on the keyboard may come out with fewer notes: any tone that would land above the top of the MIDI range is left off. If a re-chord would leave nothing but the root, the existing chord is kept instead.

Humanization

Humanization isn't applied per-note — it's a track-wide MIDI transform that adds small timing/velocity/duration offsets so notes don't sit on perfect grid positions. Toggle it via the FX button in the editor header. See the editor manuals for details.

The relationship: humanization adds small random variation across many notes; stutter and overrides apply deliberate changes to specific notes. They compose.

Tips

• Note overrides can break automation — if a section's Reverb mix is automating a swell, an override on a note in that section replaces the automated value while the note plays. The engine smoothly returns to the automation curve when the note ends.
• Stutter respects velocity — each retrigger inherits the parent note's velocity, so loud notes stay loud when stuttered.
• Stripe colours are a quick sanity check — scrolling through the piano roll, you can spot which notes have overrides without opening any menus.
• Don't override what you can section-set — if a whole verse should have heavier reverb than the chorus, set that at the section level. Per-note overrides are for the exception, not the rule.